Sir Ralph Kohn FRS FMedSci FBPhS (9 December 1927 – 11 November 2016) was a British medical scientist, recipient of the

Queen's Award for Export Achievement The Queen's Awards for Enterprise is an awards programme for British businesses and other organizations who excel at international trade, innovation, sustainable development or promoting opportunity (through social mobility). They are the highest ...

for his work in the

pharmaceutical industry The pharmaceutical industry discovers, develops, produces, and markets drugs or pharmaceutical drugs for use as medications to be administered to patients (or self-administered), with the aim to cure them, vaccinate them, or alleviate symptoms. ...

Early life

Sir Ralph was born in Leipzig. Raised in an

Orthodox Jewish Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses on M ...

family with three other siblings, the Kohn family fled to Amsterdam upon the rise of Hitler in 1933. The Kohns, in May 1940, arrived as refugees in Manchester, via Wigan on the last boat that carried Jewish refugees from Holland to England.

Education

Educated at

Salford Grammar School Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county aft ...

, Sir Ralph won a scholarship to the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

where he obtained a PhD in pharmacology.

Career and research

After completing his PhD, Sir Ralph pursued post-doctoral studies in Rome with Professor Ernst Chain and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Sir Ralph, after a successful stint at Smith, Kline & French, set up Advisory Services, a pioneering company that conducted independent drugs trials for the pharmaceutical industry. In 1991, Sir Ralph set up the Kohn Foundation, which supports research and innovation in science and medicine, as well as the arts and education. The foundation endows several prizes for young scientists and musicians. It supports the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Kohn Award The Royal Society Kohn Award was an award given by the Royal Society since 2005 to beginning scientists who had achieved significant cultural impact through broadcasting or public speech. It was funded by the Kohn Foundation (set up by Ralph Kohn ...

for science broadcasting and the Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize and the Royal Academy of Music / Kohn Foundation Bach Cantata Series.

Awards and honours

Sir Ralph was elected an Honorary

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

in 2006, in recognition of his contributions to science via the Kohn Foundation. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: He was also an honorary fellow of the

Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its mission is to adv ...

. In November 2008, he delivered the Bynum Tudor Lecture at

Kellogg College, Oxford Kellogg College is a graduate-only constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1990 as Rewley House, Kellogg is the university's 36th college and the largest by number of students. It hosts research centres including ...

. He was knighted in the

2010 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 2010 were announced on 31 December 2009 in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Cook Islands, Barbados, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Saint Lucia, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Christopher and NevisSaint Christ ...

for services to science, music and charity.

Personal life

Sir Ralph married Zahava Kanarek, a lecturer and Holocaust survivor, in 1963, in Amsterdam. The couple had three daughters: Hephzibah (a medical researcher), Michelle, and Maxine. Sir Ralph was a long-serving member of Golders Green Synagogue and an attendee and benefactor of Shomrei Hadath. His main interests were music and singing (as a baritone), chess, and studying Talmud. In 2004, he was a guest on Sue Lawley's

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

radio programme, ''

Desert Island Discs ''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942. Each week a guest, called a "castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usua ...

''. Kohn financed John Eliot Gardiner's Bach Cantatas project:

We should give them rtiststhe sort of means which will allow them to lead a reasonable existence where they can devote themselves with heart, soul and body to their work", Kohn says. "But the patron should not be their possessor. As
Clifford Curzon Sir Clifford Michael Curzon CBE (né Siegenberg; 18 May 19071 September 1982) was an English classical pianist. Curzon studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and subsequently with Artur Schnabel in Berlin and Wanda Landowska and Na ...
once said: 'Isn't it nice that we can give something to young artists so that we can lift them closer to the stars.' That's all it's about.

Kohn died on 11 November 2016, aged 88.Sir Ralph Kohn (9 December 1927 – 11 November 2016)

Rhinegold Publishing Rhinegold Publishing is an independent publisher of music magazines, music yearbooks and education resources, founded in 1977. Among Rhinegold's publications are ''Choir & Organ Rhinegold Publishing is an independent publisher of music mag ...

. Retrieved 15 November 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kohn, Ralph 1927 births 2016 deaths People educated at Salford Grammar School Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom British businesspeople Honorary Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Knights Bachelor